


scenes from a coffee house (you'll always be mine)

by strikinglight



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, M/M, Magical Realism, Reality Bending, Slice of Life, Time Shenanigans, daichi as customer who changes everything, fixing everyone's love lives at the expense of your own, other characters/pairings floating around but it's a surprise (for now), suga as magical coffee shop fairy with time-bending powers basically
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 04:47:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6105355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/strikinglight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic or no, the common thread that runs beneath the tangle of rumors is this: however they come to arrive there, no one walks into Café Diem by chance, and no one leaves it unhappy. </p><p>Or so they say, though Sugawara Koushi is quick to smile away the whispers. The only thing he ever does have to say, in fact, in the face of the occasional curious query about what keeps his little place up and running, is “Love.” Then, for practicality’s sake, he’ll grin and add, “And hard work and a few smart investments, of course.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. they're writing songs of love (but not for me)

**Author's Note:**

> Do you remember?  
> that time and light are kinds
> 
> of love, and love  
> is no less practical  
> than a coffee grinder
> 
> or a safe spare tire?
> 
> \- “The Word” by Tony Hoagland

They say that in Sendai City, two blocks down from a certain train station, down a certain side street, there’s a small coffee shop where sorrow isn’t allowed to enter.

Some say it’s easy to find, others that you’ll miss it if you aren’t looking hard. Still others will say it’s almost the kind of shop that finds _you_ , on rare days when time is loose and plentiful and you have the luxury of letting your feet take you where they want. You may think you’re meandering, going nowhere in particular, until you come to yourself with the smell of brewing coffee in your nose and your eyes full of sky-blue roofing and white-painted metalwork making graceful cursive letters above a glass door— _Café Diem._

That’s not all there is to whisper about, either. There are occasional strains of gossip about a glamor that seems to hang over the place, something fey and unnameable that makes the interiors warmer, the light that fills them softer, the food and drinks sweeter and more satisfying than any other place in town, though ask anyone who’s ever stopped in there for a coffee break and they’d be hard-pressed to tell you why. It seems almost magical. It could almost make you believe in magic, or so they say.

Magic or no, the common thread that runs beneath the tangle of rumors is this: however they come to arrive there, no one walks into Café Diem by chance, and no one leaves it unhappy.

Or so they say, though Sugawara Koushi is quick to smile away the whispers that reach him from all over—from a friend, a friend of a friend, a customer’s friend’s brother’s co-worker’s fiancée. He writes it off as just people being kind. He has no tricks to share, no trade secrets to fold up and hide in the pocket of his work apron. The only thing he ever _does_ have to say, in fact, in the face of the occasional curious query about what keeps his little place up and running, is “Love.” Then, for practicality’s sake, he’ll grin and add, “And hard work and a few smart investments, of course.”

They’re in the heart of the city, but Koushi knows wonder can be found even here if you know where to look. He remembers how he and Asahi had to work to build this place almost literally from the ground up, with several years’ worth of savings and the seeds of a small, quite modest dream. He remembers Café Diem beginning as a wish, burning steady like a candle in a quiet room. A clean, well-lighted place of their own. Someplace for people to stop, to linger, to step out of time for a while even as the rest of the city spun madly on. It didn’t seem like much to ask of the universe at the time, and now that it’s real Koushi’s convinced the place practically runs itself, with the aid of little more than his hands making the coffee machines sing and Asahi’s gentle presence at the counter, and Ennoshita-kun coming in five days a week to wait tables and help clean and experiment occasionally with new pasta recipes in the kitchen.

Love, hard work, and a few smart investments. A place to step out of time. It’s not a lie, though Koushi’s willing to admit that he likes phrasing such statements in a way that’ll leave them open to interpretation.

He wonders if it’s creepy that he spends more time watching their customers than making coffee—or anything else that needs doing around the shop, if he’s being honest. He always reminds himself this attentiveness is just another of the job’s demands. If there’s one thing he’ll allow himself to take pride in, it’s Café Diem’s exemplary customer service.

Take today. Today is a tense day. There’s a law student buried in books at the corner table, and Koushi notes that his propensity to sigh and scrub his hands across his face grows exponentially by the hour. Near the center of the room, there’s a pair of high school students arguing—a couple, by the looks of how the boy keeps reaching across the table to take the girl’s hand, only to have her jerk away, face tight like she’s been pinched. The air grows heavy; Asahi’s eyes slide awkwardly from the cash register to where Koushi stands by the espresso machine, stirring the milk into a mug to make a latte. Ennoshita fidgets and rearranges the donuts and the slices of chocolate cake in the pastry display, less out of any real need to organize than to give his hands something to do.

Koushi’s always watching, but he takes his time. There’s always a moment he waits for, something that tips the balance. Today there are two of them: the law student growls into his pages and throws down his highlighter. It bounces, arcing into the air. The girl, in a show of melodramatics Koushi knows is typical of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, grows fed up with her boyfriend’s nervous reaching and chucks her cellphone across the table, clearly aiming for his head.

That’s when Koushi moves, draws a watch from his pocket—admiring even as he does so the bright circle of glass and metal on the end of the long chain, nestling perfectly into his palm—and clicks the button at the top once.

He’s lost count of how many times he’s done this now, but each time is wondrous to him still. How readily everything freezes. Ennoshita and Asahi are caught in mid-fidget, faces drawn and anxious, the phone and the highlighter suspended in the air. The law student hangs his head. The high-schooler couple makes a pair of statues in what almost looks like fighting stance—the girl with one hand outstretched, the boy with his splayed defensively in front of his face, anticipating an impact that never comes.

The only thing that moves in this still space is Koushi as he sets to work. Law Student-san had ordered a mocha, the couple a cup of hot chocolate each and a slice of cheesecake they’d presumably been intending to share before they started fighting. And for all that Koushi’s proud of the intricate heart shapes he knows how to make with curls of chocolate syrup on a canvas of foamed milk, it perhaps stands to reason that the real magic goes unseen.

He reaches up to the shelf above him, finds the unadorned wooden cube delicate in his hand. When he sets it on the counter and lifts the lid, all the love inside seems to sparkle, even in the frozen in-between light. The grains are smooth and crystalline, not like regular sugar at all, and there’s a lovely pink cast to them that reminds him a bit of the expensive Himalayan salt Ennoshita likes to buy.

Koushi pinches it between his fingers and sprinkles it into the cups, across the top of the cake. That’s what does most of the work, he knows. Everything else is just a bonus, because he likes things to be orderly. He caps the highlighter, setting it back down on the table before moving to close books and smooth rumpled notebook pages. He slides the girl’s phone back into her bag where it belongs. For good measure he pats down her hair and tucks a stray lock behind her ear, so that the sun coming in through the wide windows can fall against her cheeks and remind her to be warm.

He clicks at the watch again when he returns to where he’d been standing behind the counter, and time resumes. He figures that short pause is all anybody needs, sometimes, when they’re in danger of forgetting themselves.

Presently the law student begins to hum as he returns to his cases, taking his coffee in small sips with the turn of each page. The girl’s fingertips wander across the table to skim idly over the back of the boy’s hand. Ennoshita straightens up, looking relieved, and wanders into the kitchen.

“It really does work every time,” Asahi whispers, and Koushi smiles at him before standing up on tiptoe to return the box to its place on the high shelf.

“A little goes a long way.”

Koushi makes it a point not to be wasteful, makes sure he’s always careful and sparing with his supplies, but in this case he doesn’t think he’ll ever really have to worry about running out. He’s always had more than enough to give away.

 

* * *

 

He’d anticipated the move from Torono to Sendai would be hard, but most days Daichi can tell himself he’s taking it better than he initially thought he would. Everything is larger and louder here, and it had been disorienting at first to find himself always on the move, being spun by some invisible hurricane from one meeting to the next, with client calls and drafting sessions and five-minute coffee breaks in between.

“Good evening, this is Sawamura of Ukai and Company Architecture.”

Now he wakes up and suddenly remembers it’s six months since he first pulled into the city on the morning train, and he figures he must have hit some kind of workable stride somewhere along the way, learned to talk through the days without feeling utterly spent afterwards.

“Oh, yes! Imai-san, it’s wonderful to hear from you again. Michimiya-san and I have been working on the studies you requested.”

Phones are ringing off the hook in the background. Somewhere off to one side, Kinoshita-san upsets the stack of briefs on his desk—the papers go flying and he all but flies after them with a half-choked-out curse, managing to catch a few in midair, crumpling them in the process.

“Mmhmm. We’re very excited for you to take a look at them. Yes. Yes, definitely. We can arrange a consultation regarding cost estimates at your convenience.”

Another curse as Kinoshita bumps his head against the underside of his desk, scrabbling after one stray page. Daichi smiles slightly in sympathy and tunes out all the noise, focusing instead on the congenial chatter of the voice on the other end of the line.

“You can choose the place, of course. We’d be happy to meet you anywhere.” He reaches down into his briefcase to pull out a pen and a datebook, letting it fall open on a marked page in his lap. He listens a while more, then writes. The characters sit solidly in dark ink on the cream-colored paper, small and precise and clearly defined. “All right. All right, 5 PM next Thursday, November 12. Got it. Of course, it’s our pleasure, Imai-san. My regards to your husband, as always. We’ll be seeing you both soon.”

Coming to the city has netted him bigger, more complex, more ambitious projects, but Daichi still thinks he likes building houses best of all. The opportunities he’s been getting to study new building methods and technologies in particular excite him—how to disaster-proof a house, how to strengthen its resistance to wind and rain and flood and earthquake, how to make it endure and become a home.

“You skipped lunch again, Sawamura.”

Michimiya comes up behind him while he’s in the middle of setting the phone back in its cradle and putting his planner away. She circles around his desk to stand over him, her posture slightly ominous with the arms crossed and the feet planted firm against the floor.

“I didn’t skip,” he says, gesturing to the half-eaten sandwich sitting to one side of his keyboard. She looks down and grimaces at the trail of crumbs across his desk, brushing surreptitiously at it with one hand. “I had to take an important call.”

“Was that the Imai couple?”

“Uh-huh. They want to meet on the twelfth to go over the studies. Will you be able to make it at five?”

Michimiya frowns momentarily, cycling through her mental catalogue of appointments. Daichi wonders if she keeps a planner—he’s never seen her use one, digital or paper—or if by some miracle she manages to just hold it all in that head of hers. Maybe all that information is what makes her hair curl.

“I can do five,” she says after a pause. “They excited for their dream house?”

“You know it.”

She smiles then, and he returns it, but something she sees in his face makes it waver, draw back down into a deep, worried line. “Hey, Sawamura, you’re not planning to pull overtime again tonight, are you? Those bags under your eyes are starting to develop bags of their own.”

“I was… considering it,” he admits, sheepish. He doesn’t talk much to the other guys at the firm—he’s usually too busy reviewing briefs or working on new plans—and he forgets sometimes that there’s someone around who’d notice. And that she’d care, even. “Everything’s got to be perfect, you know?”

“I guess. But, Sawamura, you already do more OT than anyone else in this place. Don’t you ever, you know, go home?”

Michimiya works in Interiors, and they’re paired together often on account of having gone to the same school and subsequently developed compatible styles. Given that, and the fact that he wouldn’t be in Sendai at all had it not been for her putting in a good word for him with their current boss, Daichi figures she’s quite possibly the closest thing to a friend he has in this city.

But even if it’s been half a year, he finds he still doesn’t like talking about “going home,” not even to her. He’s never brought her over to see his place either. He figures she’d hate the boxy bareness of his apartment, find the sad peeling whitewash on the walls offensive both as an interior designer and as a human being. The irony wouldn’t be lost on her, either, that he channels so much of himself into building homes for other people, when his own living space isn’t much more than a cave with a roof and a double-locked door.

They’ve had this talk a few times before. _Go home, Sawamura. You need to get out more, Sawamura. Need me to fix you up with a girl or something, Sawamura? Or a guy? Or anyone?_ The concern is touching, to be honest, but he doesn’t know where to begin finding a cure for this… whatever this is. It feels too grave and too sad to call it loneliness. It feels inevitable, too. Daichi’s nothing if not a creature of habit, and more than anything it’s the work that keeps him anchored. It’s enough for him to keep busy, until he goes “home” and finds everything standing still and silent, exactly the way he leaves it each morning. Yesterday’s dirty clothes piled in the hamper. One plate upright in the drying rack. One futon in the hall closet.

“Look.” Michimiya again, cutting through his strange interior gloom. “If you’re gonna insist on staying here and drawing ‘til the cows come home, at least get coffee with me on Thursday after this big meeting of ours. At least that, so I can tell the folks back home it’s not my fault you don’t have a life. Please?”

How very like her, he thinks, to allow him absolutely no escape, even inside his own head.

“Okay,” he tells her, and to her credit it’s a little easier to smile when he does, even if it’s technically conceding defeat. “Okay, you win.”


	2. this constant compromise (between thinking and breathing)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a few people get lost, a fight is broken up, and Daichi ponders construction.

“Do you think he got stood up?”

“Shhh, that’s not nice,” Koushi demurs. He’s spacing out, hands idle on the counter by the cash register, half his attention on Ennoshita standing next to him and the other half on the black-haired boy at table nine.

“Definitely got stood up.” Ennoshita shakes his head ruefully, having drawn his own conclusions. “Look at him, just sitting there. He hasn’t even ordered.”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t look like he’s here for a date.” It comes as kind of a surprise when Asahi speaks up softly on his other side. He’s not the gossipy type by default, and he doesn’t usually join in this little game Koushi likes to play with Ennoshita on slow nights, the two of them watching and speculating and making up stories. “He’s got kind of a scary face.”

A scary face. Well, Koushi thinks, he’s not wrong. The boy looks… _intense_ is the word for it, perhaps, hunched ominously in his seat with his arms crossed over his chest, mouth twisted in the bitterest scowl he’s ever seen on a customer, eyes down. You’d think he was trying to scorch holes in the tablecloth with those eyes. To say nothing of the fact that he’s holding that pose almost perfectly, moving barely at all except to check his watch or flick an irritable glance up toward the door.

Needless to say, Koushi’s been watching—quietly taking note of how the frown has deepened, the eyes darkened, the arms tightened over the course of the last forty-five minutes. Now the furrows in his brow are ridged so deep you could plant rice seedlings in them, probably.

“‘A scary face,’ says the pot to the kettle. Can you believe this guy, Suga-san? And this after he made a little girl cry on the way here this morning.” Ennoshita scoffs, but he’s laughing underneath it, and Koushi can’t help chuckling along as Asahi’s eyes go wide and wounded.

“She dropped her doll, and I was picking it up for her!”

“Now, now. You’re going to make him cry.” Koushi cuffs Ennoshita affectionately around the head and picks a menu up from the small stack on the counter, circling around to the other side. “Anyway, let me take care of Scowly-kun.”

 

* * *

 

“Ah, isn’t it great that the clients pay for everything?” Michimiya’s breath makes a small white cloud as she steps through the doors of the restaurant and out into the biting air, and her arms arc upward, stretching high above her head. “I don’t think I’d ever get to eat at a place like this otherwise.”

“Me neither,” Daichi says, smiling, trailing along behind with her coat in the crook of his arm. She’s been saying all evening that she doesn’t need it—describing the weather as merely “nippy,” assuring him her blood runs quite warm—but he figures that when the night deepens in a few hours she’s going to change her tune, and he can’t have his only friend in the city catching her death of cold. “I don’t think I’ve spent much time in this part of town before, even.”

“Well, it shows. You were so modest with your order, Sawamura. For a minute there I thought you were going to try and survive on water and breadsticks!”

Out-of-house client meetings are, for Daichi, exercises in finding the most inexpensive things on the menu in under a minute. He knows she knows this, and that she’ll take every opportunity to tease him about it mercilessly. “There’s no need to abuse the generosity of two people in love, you know, even if you _are_ building them their dream house.” He chuckles. “Besides, you ate enough for both of us.”

“I’ll eat what I want, Sawamura Daichi. I’m a modern woman.” Michimiya slows, and they fall into step on the sidewalk. Her cheeks have gone pink, though more from laughter than from the cold, he thinks. “Gosh, they’re so in love, aren’t they? Did you see those two? They barely looked at us the whole time.”

The two of them have discovered over the past months that meetings with the Imai couple mostly tend to move in two directions—serious business discussions on the one hand, about what they think of the latest designs and what materials will fall within their price range and which building contractors to partner with, and equally serious life updates on the other. They’ve only met a handful of times to discuss the house, but Daichi always finds he comes away from each consultation knowing so many seemingly unrelated things. He knows they want a two-storey in the Western style. He also knows they want two children, eventually—a boy and a girl would be ideal, but they’ll be happy with whatever comes. He remembers the wife’s eyes shining as she told them this, the husband’s arm steady and at ease around the back of her chair.

“So in love,” he agrees, as they turn the corner.

 

* * *

 

Date or no date, Scowly-kun—the boy at table nine—is waiting for someone. Not to be a busybody or anything, but Koushi figures the kid could use a cup of coffee to calm those obvious nerves. And someone to talk to, even, if it turns out he’s the talking type.

“Hello,” he says to start with, drawing up close and putting on his best chirpy-coffee-shop-owner grin.

In response Scowly jumps a little in his chair, twisting around to face him with a strange frenzy in his eyes that looks almost like terror. He relaxes when he discovers it’s a human being next to him and not whatever horror he might have been imagining before Koushi’s voice called him out of his head, but just a bit. His shoulders stay drawn up stiffly toward his ears.

Not the talking type, then. Koushi backpedals—clears his throat, makes his voice soft. “Everything okay?”

Scowly looks down and Koushi thinks he can see his eyes burn a little again under the jagged black bangs. He fears, momentarily, for the tablecloth. “Yeah. Just waiting for someone.”

“Can I get you anything?” When he doesn’t make the connection right away, Koushi offers the menu, prompting, “While you wait, I mean.”

Scowly takes it after some hesitation. His eyes skim over the first page, and then go briefly to the pastry display. “Maybe a flat white.” A pause. “And my, uh. My friend will want a peach Danish, I think.”

“Your friend has good taste. Do you want me to warm it up for you?”

“No. He’ll probably want it cold.” It’s almost endearing, the conviction with which he says this. “Says the glaze on a Danish is better when it’s all crusty on top of the pastry.” There’s no anger to his frown now, no rancor, just a deep, serious thoughtfulness—but then he catches himself and starts chewing at his lower lip, awkward and fidgety in a what-am-I-doing kind of way. “Anyway. Sorry to trouble you.”

“No trouble.” Koushi smiles, his hands loose by his sides. “One flat white. One peach Danish, cold, with the glaze extra-crusty.” He’s always taken pride in being able to take orders without the aid of a notepad. He likes looking his customers in the eye when he’s talking to them, seeing their faces.

 _I hope he shows up soon,_ he wants to add, but he never gets to.

 

* * *

 

“I just wish they’d stop asking us if we were engaged yet or not, you know?” Michimiya’s hands make circles in the air as she talks, sketching out her frustration in eloquent loops and curls, and Daichi’s caught between nodding enthusiastically in agreement and marveling at the fact that she hasn’t even got gloves on. “Like, even when they don’t ask, every time they take a break from making googly eyes at each other you know they’re thinking it.”

“And every time you try to tell them they’ve got the wrong idea, it’s ‘oh, no, no need to be modest, your secret’s safe with us.’” He cringes a little, remembering the failed attempts, the giggling and snickering and solicitous hand-waving. “Is it because we work so well together?”

“That doesn’t make sense. You probably don’t get any work done at all when you’re in love, if those two are anything to go by.” She looks up at him and grins, suddenly mischievous, teeth a bright white in the glow of the streetlamps. “Maybe I should get you a fake ring just to mess with ‘em.”

“Don’t be mean, Michimiya,” he tells her. In spite of his effort to sound stern, there’s a fondness undercutting the admonition.

He isn’t sure how it appears from the outside—if it really looks different from what it is, or if all the teasing they seem to get from clients and colleagues alike is simply the conclusion most people are inclined to draw when they’re starved for some quick gossip and happen upon a man and a woman who spend a lot of time together. There’s an understanding behind their interactions that he doesn’t share with anyone else, he’ll allow for that much, born of time and trust and hard work, but that’s all there needs to be. This easy company, this friendship. He grins at her sidelong, mouths “googly eyes,” and knows she knows it too—soon they’re both laughing again.

“The googliest eyes, Sawamura.” She stops, glances around to get their bearings, and points. “Anyway, here, we just follow the road, then when we hit the TV station, we make a left and—”

 

* * *

 

There are a few things that happen, in such close sequence to one another that they seem almost to blur together, in the time between Koushi’s rehearsal of Scowly-kun’s order and the actual arrival of said order at his table.

The first is that the door to the café crashes open with the force of a small hurricane. Out of the corner of one eye he sees Ennoshita’s mouth drop open and Asahi jump nearly a foot in the air at the impact, and for a moment he’s afraid the glass will shatter, or it’ll be blown off its hinges entirely.

The next is that the person who barrels in at a run—a small red-haired hurricane, essentially—keeps going. Koushi’s not sure if it’s will or sheer inertia that carries him through the doorway, dodging tables and chairs and wide-eyed, fearful customers, until he comes to stop at last in front of table nine, slamming his hands down on it as he comes to a halt, or tries to.

The next is this rapid-fire exchange, delivered at close to the highest possible volume achievable by human vocal cords:

“Where have you been?!” The small hurricane—Shrimpy, Koushi decides—has a surprisingly loud voice for someone so short. It fills up the whole room, easily. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

His arrival finally gets Scowly to move, but not in the way Koushi expects at all, surging up out of his chair with his fists clenched. It looks like it’s going to be a fight, not a date, and Koushi’s not certain whether he should be amused or concerned—they’ve never had something like this happen before. “What the hell are you on about? I’ve been waiting here for an hour!”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have picked a place that was so hard to find! I swear to god I’ve probably walked around half of Sendai—“

“How on earth is this place hard to find? Yachi-san comes here after work all the time! All you need to do is make a left at the TV station, dumbass!”

“I didn’t know it was gonna be down such a tiny side street, dumber-ass!”

“That’s not even a word, you idiot! Do you wanna go or—?!”

“I’ll take you any—”

The next is Koushi reaches into his pocket and stops time.

 

* * *

 

They’re walking maybe another five minutes before Daichi senses something amiss. He stops, glances around at the concrete walls on either side of them. “What’s the coffee place you wanted to go called again?”

“… I can’t remember.” Michimiya’s shoulders rise and drop again in an absent little shrug in response to his blank stare. One hand comes up to tug at a stray lock of her hair as she furrows her brow in concentration. “Something French. Fleur de Lis? How do you pronounce that?” Another shrug. “Anyway Saeko-san said we’d know it when we saw it.”

“And you’re sure it’s _left_ at the TV station? Down this little street here?”

“I guess? Isn’t this it, the blue place?”

Daichi squints up at the sign, shading his eyes against the light beaming out at them from wide glass window, bright enough to warm them right through in spite of the night. “No, this one’s called Café Diem. And there’s… nothing else here.”

“Oh.” A pause, a nervous giggle. “There isn’t, is there?”

“Michimiya!”

“Okay, so it may have been right! I don’t know, the running boy was so distracting!”

Daichi’s jaw drops. “So your instinct was to _follow_ him?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” She claps her hands together in front of her chest in a vaguely defensive prayer pose and screws her eyes shut. “But, hey, this place looks just as good, so why don’t we just—”

“Michimiya, honestly—”

“I said I was sorry! If it’s not good I’ll pay for your coffee, I promise! Please don’t kill me!”

 

* * *

 

Koushi works quickly, even if he’s outside of time and doesn’t have to. Presently the coffee is made and the biggest and the most sugary of today’s lineup of Danish pastries is perched on a clean plate. He sets them down on table nine, steps back and considers the scene for a moment, and decides this particular case may need just a little more intervention.

As far as communication is concerned, after all, there’s so much to be said for body language; Koushi takes Scowly’s arms and guides them back down until they’re relaxed by his sides, carefully uncurls his fists so his hands hang loose. He straightens Shrimpy and stands him up at full height—such as it is, he thinks, and chuckles—instead of half-lunging forward, his posture tense and adversarial with the palms braced against the table. As a last touch, Koushi pats down his hair—it doesn’t do much for the spiky, wind-tossed wildness, but maybe he’ll be able to see just a little better with those bangs out of his eyes.

“That was so scary,” Asahi whispers, one large hand immediately coming up to clutch at Koushi’s sleeve once he starts time up again. Koushi pats it reassuringly, trying not to giggle at how bewildered Shrimpy and Scowly look when they come back to themselves to a fully prepared table spread and no clue at all how it got there—or what they’re doing, for that matter.

“No harm done, you big baby. There’s a lot of love there.”

“That’s just you making magic, Suga-san,” Ennoshita remarks, disbelieving. “You don’t seriously think those two _love_ each other?”

“Oh, totally. It’s just a weird kind—all inside-out, you know?” Ennoshita’s eyebrows look like they’re going to ascend all the way up into his hairline when Koushi smiles and shakes his head. “It wouldn’t work without any love there at all, I don’t think. Look at them now.” As one their eyes sweep back to table nine, where Shrimpy and Scowly have taken their seats, the former beginning to chatter in a much cheerier (but no softer) voice, the latter relaxed now in his chair, hands folded around the cup in front of him, seemingly transfixed as he listens.

“Incredible,” Ennoshita says, at the same time that Asahi breathes, “Well, what do you know,” and releases Koushi’s sleeve.

 _I try,_ Koushi’s about to say, before the bell above the door rings as it opens—much more gently this time—and the three of them snap to attention.

“Welcome to Café Diem!”

 

* * *

 

The first thing Daichi does upon arrival in a new place, every time without fail, is to examine the details of its construction. This is symptomatic of his need to take his work everywhere, for all that he’s been told numerous times by too many people to name—Michimiya, mostly, these days, though he hears it from his parents whenever he calls home, and from his superiors as they walk by his desk on the way out in the evenings—that that particular bad habit will be the death of him one day. Still the compulsion is almost visceral, the need to run his eyes along walls and ceilings and check for cracks, imagine the precise angles at which the sunshine would bend through the windows at different times of day.

His first thought is that Café Diem is far too fragile. There’s too much glass, from the wide window facing out into the street to the rectangular panels in the door to the framed photographs that cover the walls, and the beam that crisscross the ceiling look aged, albeit sturdy. This place would turn into the equivalent of a minefield in an earthquake, he thinks. It can’t possibly be safe.

But also, he imagines in spite of himself, no more than a heartbeat later—how the place must flood with light in the daytime. The washes of rose and gold and sunset reds and oranges that probably cover the walls. Michimiya picks up on it just as quickly—“How pretty,” she’s murmuring as she sits across from him, and “we should come back here one Sunday”—but what’s unusual is how quickly Daichi’s mind slides from examining the place itself to fixating with just as much attention on the people in it.

There are only three filled tables in the house tonight—the one he shares with Michimiya by the window, two chatty boys students in one corner, a group of girls at the long table off to one side. The café seems to be run by a staff of three. There’s a tall broad-shouldered guy at the cash register, and a younger one with a kind of sleepy expression—he was the one who brought the menus to their table when they came in, Daichi remembers—and another one to whom they both seem to defer, and it’s this last one that Daichi finds his eye straying after more than once as he pretends to scan his menu. It’s not just his unusual looks, though Daichi’s willing to bet he’s never met anyone who looks like him before—smallish and slender, with pale skin, and wispy pale hair that keeps shifting as he moves from a soft grey to nearly silver to gold-streaked in the light. He has something else, too. Daichi can’t put his finger on it—unusual, for someone with his attention to detail, and kind of irritating, to be honest.

Right now Guy Number Three is in front of the counter, laughing at something—it looks like—Guy Number Two has said about Guy Number One, punching Number One affectionately in the arm as he leans his weight against the counter. It looks like it hurts, if the way Number One winces and holds up his hands is anything to go by, but the sympathy disappears entirely from Daichi’s consciousness when Number Three straightens up, wiping away an imaginary tear. Daichi finds he can’t think of anything at all when Number Three’s head turns reflexively toward their table—when he catches Daichi’s eye, and smiles.

Over his shoulder—from the other end of the city, it sounds more like—he hears Michimiya ask, “Hey, are you okay? You look a little pale.”

Before he can answer, Number Three has crossed the room—Daichi never even saw him move, though he’d probably been too preoccupied with trying to remember how to breathe, how to work his lungs in conjunction with his nose and mouth—and stands now at his elbow.

“Hi there,” he says, still with that smile that makes the inside of his tiny café look all lit up like high noon. “May I take your order?”

Daichi finds he’s at a loss as to which question to answer first.


	3. if time is money (then I'll spend it all for you)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the regulars come by, and everyone needs a break.

Of all their regular customers—and he finds they’ve gathered a good few, over the year that they’ve been open—Koushi thinks it’s the two med students that are his favorite.

They don’t come often—a couple of times a month, maybe, although the visits increase both in frequency and duration around exam season—and they’re always studying, so he’s never been able to chat them up at length. Still, he finds he likes to watch them for some reason, the tall blond boy with glasses and his freckle-faced companion in their crisp white uniforms, and the long mental list of small quirks he’s drawn up for the both of them even without knowing their names.

The most obvious—and perhaps the strangest—thing is that they barely speak, whether it’s to each other or to anyone else around. Koushi himself never gets much more than mumbled thank-you’s and good-afternoon’s whenever he comes to their table, though occasionally Freckles stirs himself from the pages of his books to reach out and help Koushi with the cups, and in these moments Koushi thinks he quite likes the shy, sweet expression, the wobbly smile.

Glasses, meanwhile, barely looks up from what he’s reading. He doesn’t ever smile, keeps his face schooled all the time in this flat, inscrutable mask of academic concentration. Someone more thin-skinned would probably have found such resolute obliviousness to the world around him off-putting, but for Koushi it’s mostly okay, except for the times that he catches Freckles pausing in between turning a page and looking across the table toward his… what? Best friend? Boyfriend? Study buddy with benefits? He and Ennoshita have discussed this in whispers behind the counter, tried to make sense of quirks and habits and unreal amounts of time spent together in silence, but they haven’t yet reached a satisfying conclusion.

Koushi wonders all the time what they are. In the rare moments that he catches Freckles spacing out like this—looking up, biting his lip—it almost seems like he’s wondering the same thing.

The kid always looks like he wants to say something. To take a break. To talk. For his sake Koushi always wishes they would, because he’s seen him start to shift a little in his seat—Freckles is the nervous one, always glancing around and fidgeting—seen him twist his fingers together in his lap before his eyes drop back down. But Glasses keeps his head angled firmly down and doesn’t seem to notice.

 

* * *

 

It’s the memory of a cup of coffee that carries Daichi through the weekend.

Or, well, maybe that’s imprecise. The memory is of many things. The cup of coffee is just where it ends. It actually begins with Guy Number Three standing by their table, head inclined thoughtfully toward Michimiya, the two of them in deep discussion about the merits of a mocha versus a mocha breve.

(Daichi doesn’t even know his name, which is stupid considering that he’d taken note of the nameplate neatly pinned to the front of his shirt, but as soon as the guy smiled and asked “May I take your order?” Daichi’s vision had tunneled, and he suddenly found he couldn’t see much more than the wide, beaming spread of that mouth, misplaced though it may have looked on such a delicate face.)

Michimiya had settled on the breve, swayed at the last pass by a lengthy speech on the wonderfully subtle creaminess of half-and-half from Number Three—or possibly by the light in those brown eyes, the jaunty tilt of his head as he called it the nectar of angels—and then all of a sudden the latter was turning, shifting around to Daichi to field a pleasant “And what’ll you be having?” and the only semi-coherent thought Daichi could scrounge up for all his speed-menu-reading skills was _I’m not ready—_

“…Brew?” Daichi had croaked, all eloquence and coffee know-how gone with his breath. He’d felt his face burn, but Number Three had laughed from deep in the pit of his chest, the sound heavy and warm and wonderful, ringing in the air.

“I figured, you look like a no-frills kind of guy.” He winked, and Daichi gulped. “We’ve got a great house brew. Give me a few, okay?”

That was Thursday night. It’s now Monday afternoon, and in the few stolen idle minutes between one task and the next Daichi finds his thoughts wandering back to the smallest things—how smooth that coffee had been as he drank it down, Number Three’s face and his laugh and the careful way he’d set the cup and saucer down on the table in front of Daichi, the shape of long pale hands tapering to slender wrists under the cuff of his sleeve.

The pen in his hand moves idly over the first page of the notepad on his desk, the motions so practiced Daichi barely has to look down at it. Soon the paper is covered with small coffee cups, curls of steam sketched out in ink.

 _You’re spacing out again,_ Michimiya texts him from across the office.

Daichi glances at his phone, then up at her where she sits by the windows. She’s staring at her computer screen, seemingly preoccupied, but even from this distance he can see she’s pursed her lips like she’s forcing back a smile. He sighs and types _I’m not,_ hits Send.

 

* * *

 

The long, near-wordless study sessions continue through the week, though things are significantly noisier in the shop by Friday night, thanks mostly to the presence of Koushi’s second favorite pair of regulars, from the TV station around the corner.

“Don’t those two do anything but read?” Nishinoya drawls, too loudly, from the bar. His legs are tucked up under him and his weight balances precariously on the high stool, steadied only by an elbow on the counter, but Koushi distracts himself from thoughts of a fall and a possible concussion by noting that the curled-up sitting position makes him look even smaller. “Watching them’s starting to make my head hurt.”

Tanaka beside him, meanwhile, has his entire upper body draped over the counter, seemingly unable to hold his spine straight after a day’s work. “Look at those nerds go. Books for miles, man.”

“They’re studying to be productive members of society.” Koushi chuckles and reaches over an espresso machine to swat at their heads. “I’m not sure I can say the same for the two of you.”

“That hurts, Suga-san!” Tanaka whines, in counterpoint to Nishinoya’s “We have jobs! We pay our taxes!” And then, plaintively, in unison, “Chikara, customer care!”

“You’re not customers until you order something, you loafers.” Ennoshita looks like he wants to clock them one—in a loving way, if that’s possible—and Koushi doesn’t doubt that he would, if not for the glass in his hands that he’s wiping dry.

A lightbulb seems to turn on above Nishinoya’s head, and Koushi finds he’s chuckling under his breath because this always happens to him in particular—he’ll come in and sit at the bar, chatter away for an hour not two feet from the coffee machines, and completely forget the original purpose of his visit.

“A tall Americano for me, Suga-san! Extra hot, like always.”

“And a double ristretto for me. We’re going back on the late shift after this.”

“You heard ‘em, Asahi.” On cue Asahi smiles and keys the orders into the cash register, but he pales visibly when Koushi adds, “Wanna come over here and do the Americano?”

Asahi’s always on edge, for some reason, with those two around. Always more anxious than usual—and that’s really saying something, though Koushi doesn’t get the sense that it’s because he dislikes their company. He’s seen Asahi’s hands shaking something fierce when they push the cups across the bar toward Nishinoya, threatening to spill, near-paralyzed with nerves for all that he could probably make an extra-hot Americano with his eyes closed by now.

(Koushi’s noticed it’s become Asahi’s after-hours drink of choice as well, the last cup he makes for himself before he hangs up his apron for the night and goes home. He also knows that Asahi could barely stomach coffee without sugar and milk until a few months back. These thoughts are entertaining, but in the interest of friendship he doesn’t let himself think too much about what they might mean.)

“Suga—”

“Come on,” he says. “It’s your specialty.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m a little jittery about the new project.” Daichi leans against a lamppost as Michimiya goes down on one knee to retie a shoelace, one sneakered foot scuffing thoughtfully against the pavement. “The Imai house looks like it’s going to take care of itself, but this remodeling job Tsukishima-san’s asking us to do, for the family home—”

“She says the house is old and it’s a good time, with the older son about to get married and all.” She waves a careless hand and rises to her feet. “Apparently we came on super high recommendation from the future daughter-in-law, too—Saeko-san really wants it to be us, if possible.”

“But Saeko-san knows I haven’t worked with traditional housing.” They set off together at a jog. “Does she really want to risk me screwing up her relationship with her in-laws?”

“She sounded pretty confident when she called me into her office this morning.” It’s meant to be reassuring, but Michimiya catches his eye out of the corner of hers and Daichi can’t help thinking she also looks a little sly. “Said I should at least pitch it to you. Something about needing to push you out of your comfort zone.”

 _But I’m already there,_ Daichi thinks, a curious mixture of warmth and exasperation rising in his chest. She should know he never feels more out of his depth than when they’re dealing with young marrieds. He doesn’t say this aloud, though, for fear of being teased.

“Anyway, only you would want to talk shop while jogging, Sawamura.” He makes a wry face at her over his shoulder, and she laughs. “Let’s try a normal topic this time. What are you doing this weekend?”

Their official agreement on the matter of overworking, as it currently stands, is this: Michimiya mostly concedes, lets Daichi destroy himself to whatever extent he sees fit during the week, provided that he never, _ever_ work overtime on Friday nights. Friday nights, she insists, are for fun things. At the very least for relaxation. This is apparently something that goes without saying for people who aren’t Daichi, and in turn she seems convinced that the concept is completely lost on him—why else would she insist that they spend every other Friday evening together, if not to police his fun-having?

They’re at least egalitarian about deciding what they do on these Fridays, though mostly the outcome is dinner, or jogging, or one followed at some point by the other.

“I haven’t really thought about it.” He has the good grace to try and sound a little meek. “Always open to your expert suggestions, though.”

“Honestly,” she huffs, “I don’t know what you’d do without me, sometimes.”

He smiles. “You mean most times.”

“All the time.”

“All the time, then.”

 

* * *

 

It’s on Sunday that Koushi decides the med students need a break, and stops time for them.

There’s a half-finished latte on the table in front of Freckles, while Glasses seems to have set his own latte to one side and forgotten about it. The ice has probably melted all the way down but the wispy milk froth is still there, sitting mostly undisturbed near the rim of the glass.

He’s caught them at an interesting moment, too—Glasses is buried in his books as always, the thick volume in front of him cracked open to an elaborate diagram of the human hand, each bone identified in fine print and clusters of small, spindly arrows. Freckles’ own textbook is open on the same illustration, but his eyes are elsewhere, lifting upward and away from the page to gaze across the table, heavy with something that looks suspiciously like longing. The highlighter in his hand is bleeding out into the paper.

Koushi thinks it’s kind of sloppy of him not to have done this from the get-go, but he figures it will have to do. He fetches his little square box from behind the counter and sprinkles into the cups, then caps Freckles’ highlighter and lays it to rest on the table. Then he steps back, tapping a fingertip contemplatively against his lips as he considers how to rearrange the scene.

His first impulse is to set the books aside—though to be honest his _real_ first impulse is to steal them and hide them behind the counter, because after several days of having pictures of organs fill up his peripheral vision even he feels like he’s developing a migraine from information overload. He figures almost immediately that he probably shouldn’t, that such an obvious disruption wouldn’t be authentic. He settles instead for the light touches, the subtle neatening up, closing books and notebooks that don’t seem to be in use, gathering up scattered pens and returning them to their pencil-cases.

“To be looked at the way you look at this doof, honestly.” He looks down at Freckles again and feels his heart stir, and presses his hand against the kid’s back so the caved-in spine straightens the slightest fraction. “But you’ve got to speak up if you want something, you know?”

“And you,” he murmurs, pinching the shell of Glasses’ ear between his thumb and forefinger—but gently, almost with affection. “You have a real keeper here. You’d better pay attention.”

 

* * *

 

Somewhere in the maze of streets between his apartment and his office, between his office and the TV station, Daichi begins to wonder if he’s lost his way to the little coffee shop. A small part of him is beginning to doubt it exists at all, though he holds Michimiya’s instructions so clearly in his head that he can retrace the rise and fall of her voice on the other end of the phone line: _Take the train here, go down this avenue, make a left here. We found it once; I’m sure you’ll find it again._

This is an unfamiliar part of town, and all the buildings look the same. He’s half-expecting to round the corner and find a dead end. Daichi wonders as he walks if Café Diem is the sort of place you can only arrive at through a certain indirection—the kind of place that you only find when you’re lost. The kind of place that’s only half in this world. Or something like that, even if the idea seems to outrun all logic.

“You’ve been doodling,” Michimiya had said on the phone a few nights ago. “You never doodle.”

Maybe not, but he’s not sure what that has to do with anything. He’d been so careful, too, to dispose of all those little notepad-drawings of coffee cups, pages and pages.

“You should go back there,” she’d told him, and there was a particular heaviness to the word _should_ that suggested she meant him to take it as _You_ will _go back there._ ”On Sunday. Might do you good to be out, get some sun. Sketch a bit. It’s nice when you sketch, you know.”

In a show of good faith and willingness to take friendly advice, there’s a sketchbook in his bag he hasn’t opened in more than a year. He may not have an artist’s sensibilities by any means, but he’s always liked drawing by hand, been comforted by the concreteness of it. It’s just that there hasn’t been time—but maybe today, since it’s Sunday. Maybe some sun and a pencil in hand will do him good. One of the things Daichi remembers, so clearly it almost feels like a dream, is that the place had seemed full of sun, even at ten o’clock at night in the middle of the work-week.

 

* * *

 

“Are you _eavesdropping?”_ Asahi whispers.

“Shhh, I’m not. I just have clean ears.” Koushi speaks under his breath, face turned toward the countertop to hide his smile, nudging Asahi in the ribs gently with one elbow. If nothing else, he needs to have something good to report to Ennoshita when he comes back in on Monday, though he’ll probably still be upset that he missed all the good parts.

Freckles is stretching, rubbing at his eyes like he’s just woken up from a nap. Glasses still has his head down, though Koushi swallows down the victory yell that rises in his throat when they both put their hands out absentmindedly for their coffee.

“Tsukki.” Freckles’ voice cracks a little, though whether it’s from nerves or from staying quiet for so long Koushi finds he can’t tell. “Can we take a break?”

 _Tsukki,_ Koushi thinks, and out of sight his hand darts out and squeezes Asahi’s arm, because the sound of such a cute nickname has him just a little giddy. Asahi makes a soft plaintive noise of protest in the back of his throat, but doesn’t swat the hand away.

“You’re giving up already?” Glasses— _Tsukki,_ Koushi mentally amends, and wonders for a spell what his full name is—finally does look up then, brow crinkling in apparent annoyance, and Freckles’ face falls a little. Koushi briefly entertains the thought of throwing a mug at Glasses-Tsukki’s head.

“It’s just—” Freckles sets his glass down, rotates his wrist—and the rest of the sentence dies when the joint cracks so loudly Koushi can hear it from where he stands. Glasses’ frown seems to deepen, if that’s at all possible.

“Your wrist.”

“Everything hurts.” He sounds apologetic. “We’ve been rewriting notes all day.”

“You don’t write at a healthy angle. You probably press down too hard, too.”

“…Sorry, Tsukki.”

“Give it here.” Glasses clicks his tongue—then, without warning, reaches across the table and takes Freckles’ arm. His fingertips come down, deft, with gentle pressure, on the joints of the fingers, the inside of the palm, before moving down in slow circles to the wrist and forearm. Freckles colors and drops his gaze down to the table, and behind the counter Koushi digs his nails into Asahi’s arm again.

“Suga!”

“Sorry! Sorry. Got carried away there.” He releases Asahi’s arm, sheepish, and turns his attention toward smoothing down the wrinkles his grip has made in the sleeve with the back of his hand. It’s an equally welcome distraction to hear the bell above the door ring and catch someone take a seat at the table by the window out of the corner of his eye.

“Go take orders,” Asahi tells him wryly, passing over a menu. “Do some work around this place for once.”

He nearly doubles over when Koushi’s fist connects—lovingly—with his ribcage.

 

* * *

 

A quick glance around tells Daichi that Guy Number One is sitting down with some paperwork at the counter, and Number Two must have the day off, because he’s nowhere to be found—so it’s but logical that Number Three is the one who comes over to take his order. That’s both a blessing and a curse, as it turns out, because Daichi’s had that grin at the back of his head for more than a week and still finds himself completely unprepared for how brilliant the real thing feels, framed in the late Sunday afternoon light.

“Hi,” he says. “Will you be wanting the house brew again?”

“Yes, please.” Daichi’s returning smile feels like a sickly, thin thing in comparison, but he puts on his best face anyway. “Do you remember everyone who comes in here?”

“We’re a small place; it’s not that hard.” The nametag pinned to his chest says _Suga—_ probably a nickname, Daichi thinks, and finds it suits him. Maybe one day he’ll be brave enough to ask what it’s short for. “Lady friend not with you today?”

He hears the unasked question—he’s had a lot of practice in picking up subtext on all Michimiya matters, though he isn’t sure why he’s especially quick on the uptake this time. “She’s got a blind date, I think, so it’s just me.”

“A date, huh?” What’s that supposed to mean? But Suga goes on, that unbroken veneer of cheeriness drawn so close around him the very air around him seems to shine with it, and Daichi finds he can barely get his head around what’s happening from one sentence to the next. “Well, make yourself at home.”

“I’ll do that.” Daichi pushes on in turn, determined, even if he’s not sure it’s wise. “Suga, is it?”

“At your service.” A nod, a wink, and it’s goodbye to even that small burst of bravery. “Can I have your name, too, or are you fine with just being called House Brew-san?”

He swallows. It does absolutely nothing for the knot forming in his throat. “It’s Sawamura Daichi.”

“Daichi,” Suga repeats, slow and thoughtful, almost like he’s rolling the word around in his mouth, like he’s tasting it, and Daichi feels the back of his neck heat. He isn’t even affronted to suddenly find himself on first-name basis with someone he’s, for all intents and purposes, just met. The more pressing concern that’s just come at him from out of the blue seems to be how to convince the ground to open up beneath his chair and swallow him whole. “One house brew for Daichi, then. I’ll have it ready for you in about five minutes.”

 _Take all the time you need,_ Daichi almost says, but at the last half-second he catches himself, stutters out a “thanks” instead.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is basically a many-armed monster that was born from the collision of several weird ideas. On the one hand, it's an instance of the funny "Haikyuu-characters-have-love-trouble-and-Suga-magically-appears-out-of-nowhere-to-fix-it" trope being taken up to eleven. On another, it's a stab at a not-so-conventional coffee shop AU, riffing heavily off the plotline of the MV for ["Coffee and Tea" by Eddy Kim and Solar.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3owhJfYZXGQ) Because how can you watch the MV and not think OMG SUGA.
> 
> This fic is dedicated to Isa (isnri on Tumblr), who asked me for a Daisuga _Girl Who Leapt Through Time_ AU, and is just overall a lovely, refreshing ball of Daisuga-shipping sunshine. I'm not sure I have the narrative chops to fulfill your request outright just yet, but please take these time adventures in the meantime.  <3
> 
> There is an actual Café Diem somewhere in my city. I've borrowed their name for nefarious purposes because the pun was just too good.
> 
> (Small disclaimer: What was originally supposed to be a one-shot mutated into something that looks like it's going to span at least eight chapters of episodic romcommish magic realism shenanigans. Someone please save me. But if you're so inclined, please make yourself comfortable and buckle down for the ride, wink wink.)


End file.
